Ascot has declared war on these frivolous headpieces. We help you navigate a
millinery dilemma.

Reader, I have a terrible, terrible confession to make: I rather like fascinators, those little bits of whimsy and fluff that women have taken to attaching to their heads to signify celebration. There, I’ve said it. Despise me as you will. For somehow these frou-frou little fripperies have assumed the status of chief fashionista phobia.

However, where popular parlance deems these “fascinators”, I would prefer the term “cocktail hat” or “titfer”. Not, then, the tinselly £9.99 M&S monstrosities that one is encouraged to sport to christenings and the like. Rather, the head garb in which one might inhale a gin Martini in Claridge’s Fumoir; and when I say: “one might”, I obviously mean that one does a good deal. Not some banal, Middleton-esque, nasty nuptial platitude, but a witty, resplendently chic humdinger. Or, at least, so my theory goes.

I raise such vexing sartorial issues because the Royal Ascot style mafia has laid down the law and deemed that only the more solid, upmarket, less frothy confections be allowed in the Royal Enclosure from now on. Accordingly, hats should be worn with a base of no less than 4 inches (10cm) in diameter – positive flying saucers compared with much of last year’s fare.

Uber-milliner Stephen Jones enthuses: “At last, a clarification. Ladies will know how to be appropriately hatted and will not look as if they are going to a cocktail party. Hats have a greater sense of occasion and are right for this most important social event of the year. A fascinator is just the trimming without the hat.”

I take his point, but mourn for my beloved tiny veiled titfer, gargantuan bow-on-band, or the many feathered creations I have personally commissioned as a thrifty means of avoiding a new dress. So what to do with this fashion dilemma? Which fascinators are in and which are out? Benevolently, my editor dispatches correct and prohibited headgear to educate me in sorting millinery’s sheep from goats.

Related Articles

In fact, with ruler to hand, it turns out that the diameter of my hat wardrobe puts all on safe ground. Moreover, raking through a collection of 40 or so of spring’s finest concoctions, one does start to feel that our friends at the track may be on to something.

Naming no names, demolishing no careers, the smaller the affair, the greater the capacity for ghastliness. On the other hand, larger styles, which would be approved by the Ascot rule-makers, by no means automatically qualify as winners. Viz the marshmallow-pink Whiteleys carbuncle, or giant Piers Atkinson beetle that will keep biffing me in the eye – less Audrey in My Fair Lady, more I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!.

Much as I adore Nerida Fraiman’s exploding feather tarantula, or Stephen Jones’s own vast, silver flower fairy number (again, which would be approved by the controllers at Ascot), I find myself preferring the perilous middle ground: a six-incher à la Misa Harada’s diminutive black and peacock beauty, or Victoria Grant’s cerise cluster plus two-feathered salute.

Of course, the not-so sub- sub-text behind such demands for decorum is class: a (Mrs) Pooterish attempt at rectitude that exposes itself as being somewhat provincial. Like tans and Burberry checks, fascinators started as a modish, beau monde affectation and have spiralled their way down via the likes of the middleish Middletons to the hoi polloi – in the process becoming ever more crassly garish.

Class will, of course, out, but it is surely not the size of racing titfers, but the quality of their design that counts, or what hope for style mavens such as Daphne Guinness, or the late Isabella Blow, sometime sporters of the most fascinating of fascinators?

Moreover, the Duchess of Cambridge, a less edgy aficionado, had better watch her step, or this newly minted member of The Firm may find herself banned from the Royal Enclosure.